


ALL THE MOMENTS I LONG FOR

by tonyang (kurusui)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23258662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurusui/pseuds/tonyang
Summary: “Why are you here?” Wonwoo asked. The words were entirely too ambiguous and if it was Wonwoo on the spot, he would have asked what they meant and he knew that. But Junhui isn’t Wonwoo.
Relationships: Jeon Wonwoo/Wen Jun Hui | Jun
Comments: 16
Kudos: 73





	ALL THE MOMENTS I LONG FOR

**Author's Note:**

> [title source](https://twitter.com/myriadofstars/status/1001814090279403520) is from seungkwan himself: “vernon's a friend with whom i share so many memories, to the point that when i look at him i think of all the moments i long for."

Junhui felt bad, which was how it always started when he did something he wasn’t really supposed to do. Junhui saw the staff who had to clean up after spending a whole day blowing up balloons for a four hour taping and felt an familiar ache in his chest. Everyone else was cleaning too, but she was the only one on the floor - and irrationally the urge to reach out overtook the pangs of hunger in his stomach.

“Here, I’ll help you,” he said to the fresh-faced girl clad in all black, holding a pocket knife in one hand and a vacuum hose in the other. “There’s no harm in that, right?” Seungkwan, trailing behind the other boys towards the exit, turned around and called to him.

“Jun hyung, it’s lunch time.”

“Wait a minute,” he said back. “Just save me a container of the sweet and sour pork.”

Seungkwan watched him for a moment, smiled to himself, and walked through the doorway. Junhui looked almost helpless in a sea of baby blue and pink balloons, Seungkwan thought, a child, as the strings holding them aloft were snipped with a pair of thin scissors. Balloons raining down into his outstretched palms.

“We just have to pop them all and then get rid of them,” the staff member was saying. Junhui was hardly paying attention.

“Isn’t it so sad to undo your hard work like this?” The pretty arches fell to the ground, too, decorations that looked like they belonged at the entrance of a school dance, for dozens to walk through. Instead they were for thousands to look at through a filter of pixels. Was it really equivalent?

“It has to be done,” she answered. Mercilessly she punctured five balloons in succession with the knife and the bursting sound startled Junhui enough for his hands to jump to his ears. “You can go eat lunch, you know,” she said kindly.

“I can vacuum,” Junhui insisted, crouching on the floor. She handed the hose over and he watched the broken pieces of latex get sucked cleanly through. 

“Popping is kind of cathartic, if you want to try,” the girl said. Junhui, unable to move, looked almost as fragile as those balloons. She gave him an unfolded paper clip without words.

“I’m afraid,” he said at last, laughing at himself.

“It’s easier than you think it is. Eventually,” she said, “you just have to shut your eyes and take a stab at it.”

And then he was gone.

Wonwoo called Junhui once during those eight months, while three hours and two immigration checks had separated them also. Junhui was startled to see the characters for _Wonwoo_ lighting up his phone screen, and eagerly accepted the call. Maybe - maybe -

“Ah, Jun? I wanted to see if you were awake. The new manager wanted to introduce himself to you.” The phone fumbled onto the floor as Wonwoo audibly lost his grip in the process of handing it over. Certainly it was easy enough to concentrate on the sole reason he decided to call! Junhui felt wholly disrespected.

“Oh,” he said in the meantime. “Good evening to you too.” Hiding the disappointment in his voice with cheeky banter was not a new endeavor for him.

The passage of time then was excruciating, really. Everything returned to normal with traitorous ease when he came back to Korea, but until then-- it felt like ages of filming his drama, interspersed with magazine shoots, endorsements and other sorts of schedules. Junhui felt isolated most of the time, despite always being surrounded by people. There was something about the forced distance between where he was and where he wanted to be - or who he wanted to be with - that distorted what it felt like to be _together_ instead of alone.

Junhui had called Wonwoo fifty-eight times.

(“You never respond the way I want you to,” Junhui said once. “You never do.”

“What does that mean,” Wonwoo asked, breathing like there was no air in his lungs.)

Junhui used to play this game as a child and said so to the rest of the members the first time a bus trip took them through a mountain tunnel.

“You have to count as high as you can,” Junhui had said. “As fast as you can. When the lights start-! One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven--”

“Ah! I did this but you have to hold your breath instead,” Soonyoung said, and inhaled deeply before freezing in place. Junhui shut his eyes to concentrate harder. 

“--twenty two three four five--”

The orange tunnel lights blurred together just like Junhui’s words slurred, so fast Wonwoo lost count the moment he broke his focus. Soonyoung was still holding his breath and Wonwoo thought his ears would burst, they were so red.

“One hundred and thirty-three,” Junhui had said triumphantly when daylight broke again. But all Wonwoo could hear was the sound of Soonyoung gasping for air.

(“How much do you love me?” Junhui asked, shortly after the average Seoulite’s lunch time.

Wonwoo, still sleepy because the ringing of his phone woke him up: “How do I love?”

“How much,” and then Junhui paused. “Do you love _me."_

“What does that mean?”

Junhui just laughed and said, “It’s just a question.”

Wonwoo frowned. “I like you plenty.” 

“How much do you like playing games then?”

“Jun, I’ll stop playing if you want to hang out, you don’t have to beat around the bush like this.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to say.”

“Well, what is it then?”

A camera was trained on Junhui’s face, and he struggled to keep his composure. “‘Really, a lot,’ is what I was looking for,” he said, voice barely a whisper. “It was just a game.”

The phone slipped from Wonwoo’s ear, and he hung up without another word.)

“Junhui is sensitive, you know,” Jihoon said. It was useless of him to say, really. As if Wonwoo wasn’t intricately familiar with the various methods of unintentionally hurting Junhui’s feelings.

“And I’m not?”

“Don’t you know how he feels?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“Wonwoo.”

Jihoon was exasperated. He peeled off a bandage he’d applied earlier after cutting his finger shaving and the odor of antibiotic ointment lingered in the air for a few seconds. Jihoon would do better to keep another trash can in the studio, but something told Wonwoo there would be no benefit to pointing this out in the middle of a lecture.

“You’re sensitive in your own way,” Jihoon said after a moment. Wonwoo hated this too, the way Jihoon always says what he needs to laconically and leaves as much of a space in the conversation as Wonwoo does. There’s no compatibility in him having a conversation with Jihoon.

“I can’t explain,” Wonwoo said finally. “Junhui’s good at what he’s good at, and there’s no use in me doing it if he already does.”

“That’s not the point,” Jihoon said. “He wants to know you want to hear his voice even if he doesn’t call first.”

“Do you ever call him first?”

“Of course I do,” Jihoon scoffed. “You think you’re special?”

(“I’m so close.” It’s like floating in black, starless space. “Five keystrokes.” But he couldn’t - not even for his own sake but for Junhui’s. Junhui was there, stuck in another country, working against his wishes but according to his better judgment. Why was Junhui so selfless and so unambitious every time? Why did it hurt him to aim for his own success over everything else - everyone else, especially? And why would he never talk about it?

Why was it that feelings were always the death of him?

Wonwoo lied awake for hours thinking about the answers.)

Junhui came back to South Korea and was immediately ushered into weeks of content filming for future release, carted into warehouses and across the country. It was like his experiences were not his own anymore, everything filmed, his life for the objectification of others. Unfortunately this was not new, but it still hurt to return in full force to. Even so, he was home again.

“I saw you playing with your video camera the other day. And Seungcheol hyung said you were up until 5AM editing.” Junhui wolfed down a plate of food, mere hours before the two of them would pull out of the parking lot on a trip to a port city, hours from Seoul. He didn’t know which one, which made it more fun for him. Wonwoo had already wheedled the information out of their rookie manager.

“I wish I didn’t get so invested in everything I do. It makes it hard to abandon it after,” Wonwoo complained. Seungkwan had ordered in American breakfast before going to the company building and left the remnants for the others to scavenge. But Wonwoo didn’t climb up two flights of stairs to the dorm just to eat.

“At least you try,” Junhui pointed out, stuffing the last of his pancake into his mouth.

“What does that mean?” 

“You ask that so much, did you realize?” Junhui sighed. “You just have to know everything, don’t you? I mean, when I get halfway through something and change my mind, I just keep going with it. Or like, when I go to the 6th floor to find a snack and get so distracted I forget to actually take it with me. I won’t go back again. I’m lazy, you know. Don’t like exercise.”

“When you said you keep going anyway, did you mean with work, too?”

Junhui looked up at him suddenly. Wonwoo was watching, so he knew Junhui had been looking away before. He was chewing on his upper lip, a symptom of nervousness. Though he refused to betray he’d been hurt.

“No, and I’m sure you knew that.” Junhui slowly drew lines in the leftover pool of maple syrup on his porcelain plate.

“It’s a good thing,” Wonwoo said, backtracking. “You don’t believe in the sunk cost fallacy.”

Junhui turned in his seat and slammed his hands on the kitchen table. “Jeon Wonwoo, you’re such a nerd.”

The car ride there was quiet, punctuated with Junhui’s exclamations about a successful game round and interrupted rarely with Wonwoo’s commentary about something he thought Junhui would be vaguely interested in.

“His instant noodle hair, though.”

“Eissa has changed so much since then, the good old days. Or - rather, he’s just broken out of his shell.”

“The company’s shell,” Junhui had said softly, putting his phone down. The car rumbled over an unrepaired crack in the road. “Their image. It was his time to grow.”

“Even after all this time,” Wonwoo said, looking at him, “You’ve barely changed.” His dark hair was shorter, and his face less youthful-- but the brightness in Junhui had never faded.

Junhui looked at him strangely, the depths of his eyes so clouded none could see past the surface. “You think I’ve stayed the same?” he asked. “On the contrary. I think I’ve become more fearless than I’ve ever been.”

They stood on the shore, gray sky above them, waves crashing into the rocks stacked up beneath their feet. 

“Why are you here?” Wonwoo asked. The words were entirely too ambiguous and if it was Wonwoo on the spot, he would have asked what they meant and he knew that. But Junhui isn’t Wonwoo.

“Because I love too much,” Junhui answered.

(“I think Junhui would appreciate a sentimental gesture,” Jihoon had said back then, and Wonwoo was loath to admit Jihoon was right in insinuating what he should do. Jihoon was not often wrong, but in the end Wonwoo was limited to the extent of his own abilities. Junhui would agree later that that was all he had ever really wanted.)

They sat in the rest stop cafeteria for twenty minutes on the way home from Busan. The driver the company had hired was filling gas in the dimly lit station on the other side of the street, and their manager was asleep in the front seat, and Junhui and Wonwoo were left alone.

“That stew looks good,” Wonwoo said, seated across from Junhui, enviously staring at the deep red broth in the stone bowl in front of him, chili oil dumped in generously. Junhui’s stomach is built strong, far too strong for it to be normal and suffer no consequences.

“You should get your own,” Junhui said in between mouthfuls. “It’s really quite excellent.”

“It’ll make me bloated,” Wonwoo said, “and I have another schedule tomorrow.” He rubbed his eyes, the day’s contacts long discarded, and replaced the glasses onto his face.

“It’s such a shame all the things you have to give up when you sign up for something,” Junhui lamented. 

“It hurts less if you don’t think of it as a loss. It’s just stew,” Wonwoo said, and knew at once that was not all it was.

“It’s such a shame not to mourn your losses.” 

“Why mourn your losses when you can celebrate what you have?” 

Junhui gazed at his soup, droplets of oil floating around in the spoonful he left hovering in the air. He swallowed it.

“I’m going to the restroom,” he said, referring to the space at the back of the cafeteria where a dingy sign read MEN and offered no hope of sanitation. He shoved his tray forward and scooted out of the booth seat, leaving Wonwoo to sit in his chair.

“Junhui is the most careless person alive,” Wonwoo said out loud, moving the cellphone and wallet he had left behind out of the line of sight of the neighboring patrons. Even masked he has the intimidating look of a bodyguard, Soonyoung had once said, casually admiring the payoff of Wonwoo’s new gym membership. Still, Wonwoo did not want to be the one to explain why Junhui’s valuables went missing when his head was turned.

Wonwoo felt more vulnerable than ever, sitting in the middle of a truck stop with no security and something to guard, and the memory of Junhui’s pensive stare printed into his short term memory. It would be nice if you could take screenshots of someone as they stood in front of you, saving these images to be looked at again over and over.

It was almost a relief when he came back. “You have to be more careful,” Wonwoo said when Junhui returned, sliding his belongings across the table. “Someone will steal your things.”

“I trust you,” Junhui said, droplets of water streaking down the side of his face. “You’d never let that happen.”

Wonwoo sat next to Junhui again on the last leg of the trip, the car barely big enough for four men six feet or taller. Junhui was practically curled up on the seat in an attempt to find the most comfortable sleeping position possible in such a state, and it was devitalizing to watch.

But Wonwoo had more important things to do than uselessly stare at Junhui. His phone screen lit up his face before he had the chance to lower the brightness, and Junhui winced in the dark. He was still awake.

Wonwoo typed slowly and deliberately.

> **Jeon Wonwoo:** I think I've been in love with you for a long time.

Junhui shifted, and the sound of his phone unlocking made Wonwoo tremble. But he did not look away.

**Author's Note:**

> regarding wonhui and [text messages](https://twitter.com/fyeahwonhui/status/1051716642508394498) \-- find me at [@haengseol](https://twitter.com/haengseol) / [@likewaterising](https://twitter.com/likewaterising)


End file.
